Something doesn't add up regarding the connection between Amdapor and Norvrandt...

[Iscah]

It's possible that they were able to "manufacture" Sin Eaters, but that would mean many volunteers chose to give their lives to become monsters, they were converted by force, or they were using wildlife and mangling them to suit their own ends. I always got the impression that, as healers, and of the "light" they were about virtue and kindness, so the latter options two seem very unlikely.

That's the impression they give, but maybe not necessarily. The Lv60-70 SCH quests (which deal with some characters who are actually Nymian and had been in stasis since the War of the Magi) and talk about Setoto's father who had to "infiltrate" Amdapor seeking a cure for a sickness, and was caught and interrogated by the Amdapori. We don't know what happened to him after that, but Setoto believe it likely that they killed him.

No, Umbral is stasis, which is Light. Astral is creation and Darkness.

Yes, this is correct, and was confirmed in the MSQ. We are all well aware that it runs contrary to the REAL LIFE meanings of Umbral and Astral (the former meaning "shaded" which lends itself more to darkness, and the latter meaning "starlike" which lends itself better to light). In-game Light is Umbral, and Darkness is Astral.

I figure the Source's choice of "astral" and "umbral" is arbitrary - they just picked two opposing concepts to name the active and passive energy poles.

The Norvrandtian logic for naming active=Dark and passive=Light is also pretty arbitrary, except they coincidentally got it correct rather than back-to-front.

I'm pretty sure they are still 2 different poles. I'm referring to this article

It gets confusing because there are two different uses of "Darkness" and "Light" now. There are the actual forces/energies that we're dealing with at a large scale, which is what Koji is talking about in that interview (the only concept we had at that time).

Now Shadowbringers has thrown in Darkness and Light as Norvrandt's terms for the active and passive energy poles, which coincidentally line up with the aspects of actual Darkness and Light.

I remember Urianger saying something about that when he pointed at an elemental chart and asked whether we had gotten it all wrong since the people of Norvrandt saw Light as destructive and Dark as peaceful.

You're misremembering. They do question if we got it wrong, but the reasoning is different. Key quotes from his explanation:

The people of Norvrandt associate "the pole aligned with activity and growth" (Eorzean astral) to Darkness because "life's myriad colours combine to produce black".

"The pole aligned with passivity" (Eorzean umbral) is associated with Light because "peace and tranquility [are] as purest white unmarred by colour".

The conclusions are correct, but the logic seems very arbitrary.

[Ardox]

/snip

I'm pretty sure they are still 2 different poles. I'm referring to this article

It gets confusing because there are two different uses of "Darkness" and "Light" now. There are the actual forces/energies that we're dealing with at a large scale, which is what Koji is talking about in that interview (the only concept we had at that time).

Now Shadowbringers has thrown in Darkness and Light as Norvrandt's terms for the active and passive energy poles, which coincidentally line up with the aspects of actual Darkness and Light.
/snip

That interview was made in March 2017, 3.5 had launched in January 2017 and 4.0 launched in June. I'm going to make the assumption they had started to really pinned down what Astral/Umbral and what Light/Darkness were by that moment since they were already planning for the next expantion.

I really think the revelation we got from Urianger is that Astral and Umbral should now be distinguished from Light and Darkness. What was confusing me (and what i feel confuse a lot of player atm) is I made the relation Astral=Light and Umbral=Darkness since ARR and nothing made that assumption false up to that point. The explanation is pretty clear thought:
1) There's no umbral or astral energies, it's only a state of how one element or a mix of element manifest;
2) Darkness and Light are true energies, not elements;
3) Darkness and Light are not the same thing as Astral and Umbral; (But we now know they can have Umbral/Astral charges)



---EDIT---
Adding the relevant quote

Koji Fox: So, you have the elements—and it’s still six elements, there are no newly-discovered ones. Those elements have charges—umbral and astral. If something has “umbral energy”, it is one or more of those elements, individual or combined. So if elements have an umbral charge, it can be said that they are “umbral energies”. That’s where those terms come from, “astral energies” and “umbral energies” are not individual things, it’s a blanket term. Light and Dark are not elements, but they are energies…in a different sense. They are not elements, they are not of the elements, and they are not astral or umbral. It’s a different type of energy. You might see a Light and Dark sprite and think, oh, they must be elemetals, but those are made of an entirely different form of energy.

emphasize mine

[ObsidianFire]

Plus there is the case that the first three zone bosses were likely humans before the island was taken in the Lifestream before being turned into or merged with elemental monsters.

We know this is wrong and not the case because the game tells us what the zone bosses are in their FATE descriptions. They also are not the only FATEs that are confirmed to be Voidsent.

The wind howls with voices of those long dead, heralding the advent of the high voidsent, Pazuzu. Weather the winds he wields, lest your own screaming soul be added to the chorus.

Logic would dictate that killing the undead makes little difference to their overall situation. The voidsent Louhi─and his lethally sharp pair of ice blades─begs to differ.

The gathering of moths to the flame has drawn forth the irresistible Penthesilea─but though the voidsent warrioress may stoke the passions of mortal hearts, she has made plain that naught will satisfy her burning desire but glorious death on the battlefield.

Other Voidsent Eureka Fates would be...

A wicked puppetmaster's abrupt disappearance from this plane has left his insentient servant free to wreak whatever havoc its mechanical mind can muster.

Slaying a massive carnivorous scalekin may seem the end of one's troubles, while in fact, it is just the beginning. That corpse left rotting in the forest is the perfect means for an aether-starved voidsent to worm its way into our realm...and start killing again.

Hyperbole can be employed to suggest that the stench of rotting goobbue seven days dead is enough to kill a man. If that rotting goobbue, however, is being used as a vessel for a voracious voidsent host, then the need for hyperbole is no more.

Don't be fooled by his choice of attire. Come from the void to aid his hungry brethren in their quest to consume this realm's aether, the White Rider is a deadly beacon for the forces of darkness.

Once known to his loyal subjects as King of the Flame, for years Hazmat has wallowed in the lightless void, unable to wield his brilliant, fiery magicks. Now, unbound from the darkness, the self-proclaimed regent is free to set the world alight...literally.

As the old saying goes: every wyrm's ending is just a voidsent wyrm's beginning. Banish this particularly vicious example, and remember that no one's to blame—except the adventurers that killed the high dragon whose dying breath summoned forth this monstrosity.

When commanding an army of voidsent abominations on a campaign to quell a world of its light, two heads are always better than one. Luckily for Amarok─dread wolf of the deepvoid─he has three.

The hells have no fury like a woman scorned. They are, however, home to many a dead woman scorned, whose fury is possibly worse. The voidsent queen Lamashtu would know, since she's the bloodsucking demon who killed them all.

Ever discontent to frolic in the autumn mist like other, less sinister scalekin, the Ash Dragon would smother the world in pursuit of ambition if given the opportunity. Indeed, with his voidsent army's ranks depleted, he already seeks new hosts for his cohort of conquerors.

Unsurprisingly, Arch Angra Mainyu misses none of its surroundings─meaning that, upon its summoning, it immediately located the band of mortals responsible for murdering its voidsent brethren and vowed to take an eye for an eye.

With all manner of demonic powers at his clawtips, Grand Duke Batym is unused to inconvenience. Thus it was with some annoyance that he awakened from his abyssal slumber to find mortals cutting their way through the ranks of one of his thirty legions.

Guided by the sweet symphony of suffering souls, King Goldemar has emerged from the void with an eye toward trade with our realm. Lord of smithies he may be, but accept neither his wicked works nor his curse-forged coin.

After consuming a great many nutritious voidsent with its assorted jaws, Leuke proceeded to set its sights on attracting a veritable army of pollinating insects so that it might grow even larger. It is evidently not best pleased to see their ranks thinned.

Several of those FATE descriptions even specify that the Voidsent have come from the Void and are possessing the corpses of life to be in our realm. And that several of them were summoned by someone else...

[Bright-Flower]

This is my problem with the "Amdapori statues are based on sin eaters" logic too. The timing just doesn't add up unless the Amdapori could view the future or someone sent a sin eater way back in time.

Also... you can get around the 3k character limit by editing your initial post and adding in the rest of it.

Personally I don't think they're based on sin eaters but it is possible that the white magic they used lead to them encountering something similar.

I mean sin eaters take on a ton of forms. Some look look like bears. So those two bosses looking like a couple variants of sin eaters when there are TONS of variants of sin eaters isn't a very concrete connection for me.

[Ouen]

Personally I don't think they're based on sin eaters but it is possible that the white magic they used lead to them encountering something similar.

I'll post the quote that is in my OP again.

Q17:
In the Eorzea Encyclopedia II it mentions that the statues found within Amdapor were made in the image of transcendent beings from yet another plane. Was this referring to the Sin Eaters from the First?

A17:
In the sense of "if you look back at the Lore book, you notice certain things," we did this intentionally.

I'm not using their coincidental appearance to come up with a guess. Yoshida's response is confirmation. If it was not true, he would not have given the answer he did. Here's a rephrasing of the quote that might make it clearer.

"In EE2, we indeed purposefully wrote that Amdapor's guardians 'were made in the image of transcendent beings from another plane,' and we deliberately wanted players to return to the lore book after Shadowbringers and make 'certain' connections."

[ObsidianFire]

I know that they say that. But it's one of those things that also makes less sense when you think about it instead of more. And the explanations to justify the answer have to become more and more convoluted.

It's at these times when "we just used a game model again" would make it way more easier for everyone.

[Atamis]

I'll post the quote that is in my OP again.



I'm not using their coincidental appearance to come up with a guess. Yoshida's response is confirmation. If it was not true, he would not have given the answer he did. Here's a rephrasing of the quote that might make it clearer.

"In EE2, we indeed purposefully wrote that Amdapor's guardians 'were made in the image of transcendent beings from another plane,' and we deliberately wanted players to return to the lore book after Shadowbringers and make 'certain' connections."

In all fairness, you are interpreting that quote that way (I am also hoping the translation wasn't off)
That quote, to me, says when they wanted to make a light flooded world, they looked back into the lore book and seen ampdapor had loose threads they could build off of. Not that one thing preceded the other, simply they had these wonderful assets and lore connections they could build off of. They purposely used ampdapor as a connection as light based things, not necessarily that the flood happened before or after ampdapor made them chronologically.

[Berethos]

I know that they say that. But it's one of those things that also makes less sense when you think about it instead of more. And the explanations to justify the answer have to become more and more convoluted.

It's at these times when "we just used a game model again" would make it way more easier for everyone.

It shouldn't be that convoluted.

Much like when we traveled through the rift on our way to the First and saw glimpses of a bunch of events again from our own past and then from 100 years ago on the First, before getting pulled into the properly aligned time frame that is closer to being in sync with the Source, it's very much within the realm of possibility that at some point, Amdapori mages saw into the rift and, like us, caught glimpses of other moments in time.

I mean, if traveling through time, backwards or forwards, is possible by using the rift (and it clearly is, and specifically using the rift is a major reason they had to study Omega), then being able see both backwards and forwards in time through the rift should simply be the logical conclusion.

It's also not the only time it's happened. The Summoner book Apocalypse is a firsthand account of someone who saw the end of the world via a room in the Crystal Tower.

Think about it like this - time flows in one direction on all shards. Traveling through the rift, however, places you outside of the flow of time (this is very much corroborated by the caster Role Quests, by the way), at which point you can travel or see through the chaos to different points in time.

[Cilia]

It's actually a bit complicated...

To traverse space and time, the Bad Future Ironworks had to retrofit the Crystal Tower with tech gleaned from Alexander (Time) and Omega (Space). You could just use Time, but that wouldn't let you cross over into the First where the Calamity was rooted; with just Space, it would already be too late to stop the rejoining. In order to truly move through spacetime, you'd need both the wings of time and the power to traverse the rift.

I... doubt Amdapor had those powers, but even if that's the case... there might be some other explanation we just don't know about yet.

[Berethos]

It's actually a bit complicated...

To traverse space and time, the Bad Future Ironworks had to retrofit the Crystal Tower with tech gleaned from Alexander (Time) and Omega (Space). You could just use Time, but that wouldn't let you cross over into the First where the Calamity was rooted; with just Space, it would already be too late to stop the rejoining. In order to truly move through spacetime, you'd need both the wings of time and the power to traverse the rift.

I... doubt Amdapor had those powers, but even if that's the case... there might be some other explanation we just don't know about yet.

To successfully navigate it and travel to another shard, you're absolutely right (and I'm aware of how they pulled it off, since they explain it in the Twinning)...but that wasn't what I was suggesting, at least as it relates to the Amdapori.

I was suggesting two things. The first was that the way the rift works allows for one to look at multiple points in time, so that if one were to understand how to traverse it and could produce the power needed to accomplish it, they could go forward 100 years, then back 45, then forward 500, then back 1000 (obviously doing it that much would likely have disastrous effects on the timeline if you weren't an invisible observer of some kind)...as the rift itself exists outside of times flow. It would all depend on navigating through it to the point in that sea of chaos that gets you to the when and where you want.

The second thing, and I probably should have been clearer on this looking back at my post above, is that when the Amdapori managed to see what they did...it was not necessarily their intent to seek to navigate the rift, and that their glimpse at seeing this creature from another plane of existence was a chance event...and that it's the chaotic nature of the rift, existing outside of time as it does, that allowed for this society over 1500 years prior to see creatures (and I do think they only saw them, rather than going to where they were or having one make it on to the source) that we would then see in our time, on a world where only 100 years had passed between their creation and our arrival and subsequent defeating of them.